June 2015

Most developers are familiar with CSS floats and clearfix hacks to get proper multi-column layouts. These are still in use today because they work and have great support among a variety of browsers. However in 2009 a new display style named flex appeared on the map.

Since then flex has undergone a few changes to reach its current iteration. The flex value is an alternative to block elements floated and manipulated using media queries.

Instead developers can build a flexible container, flexbox for short. It’s great for mobile screens and responsive content for dynamic layouts and webapps. This guide will cover the fundamentals of CSS flexbox usage and some helpful resources for digging deeper into the topic.

Landing a new client is one of the great joys of being a freelance designer. It means finally taking on an exciting paid project and also putting food on the table. That said, figuring out what the new project entails and just how much food will be on your table can be a frustrating mess.

Yes, I’m talking about creating cost estimates for your prospective clients. It’s a vitally important task. On one hand, you’ll want to make sure that the estimate will cover everything the client needs. On the other, you will need to protect yourself against any unforeseen challenges in the project.

Back in May 2013, Adobe announced that it has had enough of Fireworks, and decided to feature-freeze its popular design software. While this clearly upset loyal Fireworks users, and the Envato Market community, the fact remains that Adobe Fireworks is no longer under active maintenance and for all practical purposes, its time to shine is over.

So, what does the future hold for Adobe Fireworks? Is it really dead? Or is it still good enough to be considered as a worthy design tool?

Diving into the pool of graphic and UI design can be stressful. Your work won’t be great to start. But you can get better faster by setting fixed goals.

Most goals have a fixed end point where you can state “I’ve done it!”. Since design is more fluid and difficult to pinpoint growth, it’ll help if you target specific skills and work on those areas persistently.

But where should you focus?

Here’s my top tips for the catch-all skills every designer should understand. Whether you create posters, books, websites or mobile apps, you’ll notice improvements in your work by practicing these different areas of study. To get started find the areas in which you feel the weakest and practice until you’ve built up confidence.

MyMail is discounted for 24 Hours only from 12pm 20 June 2015 AEST to 12pm 21 June 2015 AEST.

Today, WordPress is more than just a blogging platform: our favorite CMS is actually capable of handling all aspects of an online business.

eCommerce stores can track their orders, freelancers can invoice their clients directly, and bloggers can track their on-site metrics — all from within the WordPress dashboard. By handling everything from one place, it’s much easier to stay on top of your most important tasks.

Of course, it’s easy to understand why: with around 3.5 billion Google searches per day, search engines will always be a significant traffic source for websites.

Because search engine traffic is vital, never underestimate the importance of knowing where your website is ranking at all times. With this information on-hand, you can immediately identify a sudden rankings drop and respond accordingly.

Unfortunately, manually tracking your keywords is a time-consuming task – which is perhaps why so many of us neglect it! If you’re a WordPress user, however, it doesn’t have to be this way.

For every website, the navigation plays a huge role in offering a better user experience for your readers and users. If your website does not have a clearly defined and organized menu system, your visitors will more than likely be confused, and your site’s performance and conversion rate will ultimately suffer.

WordPress does offer an excellent native interface for adding and editing menus from within the admin panel, and any WordPress theme worth its salt comes with support for at least one menu location. This mechanism works seamlessly for a vast majority of websites.

In case you haven’t heard already, Ghost is a new blogging platform which differentiates itself from other popular blogging platforms, like WordPress or Blogger, due to its clean, minimalist interface.

Ghost themes are content-oriented and have clean and minimalist designs. Today, we selected 20 new Ghost themes for writersand content-oriented bloggers. These great new Ghost themes for writers have really beautiful designs and are perfect for any kind of niche.

Few things have a bigger impact on your business than your prices. Just why are prices so fundamentally important, though? Well, here are a few reasons for starters:

Prices impact your bottom line directly — in terms of revenue per item, and total number of sales.

Prices determine how competitive you are within your industry — will other businesses undercut your prices?

Prices determine how your customers perceive you – are you on the premium or budget end of the spectrum?

This should give you an idea of how critical it is that you get your pricing strategy right. Unfortunately, however, pricing your products and services isn’t always black and white. This is especially true when what you’re selling isn’t homogenous.

Online shopping has become a popular acquisition method for consumers in every country. Web shops are accessible from anywhere with Internet access, the products come right to your doorstep, and there’s often a much broader selection to choose from. Putting aside topics such as marketing and budgeting there is another big topic worthy of discussion: actually designing the website.

In this post I want to cover some modern UI trends for e-commerce web design. We all know about the obvious stuff like shopping carts, checkout pages, search bars, and security features.

But what else could be added to an Average Joe design to make it a Spectacular Joe design? Unfortunately Joe wasn’t available for questioning but I do have my own list of trends that are perfect for anyone designing or launching a new e-commerce website.

When it comes to design, there are a crazy number of tools out there to help you get the job done. Adobe has long established their presence in the world of design, and Photoshop and Illustrator stand tall as the de facto leaders among all.

Of course, the world does not end at Photoshop or Illustrator, though. However, with the slow and disappointing demise of Adobe Fireworks, and with Photoshop becoming less of a nimble tool, a void has indeed opened up for a design tool that can perform professional level work with just enough tools to get the work done.

An easy to follow Photoshop tutorial on how to to use Photoshop to create a cloud Photoshop brush set. When you learn this technique you can create your very own set of cloud brushes. It such a simple technique, which takes a matter of seconds to achieve the end result.

Next week, Envato Market will highlight five powerful WordPress plugins, each heavily discounted, that will help you grow and run your business like a pro. Get first access with our exclusive daily email alerts. We’ll also include bonus free tutorials that will help you master your new WP plugins.

New Releases

With the new Envato API and Support announcements which have just been released in the last few weeks, I thought I ought to write a post about how I’ve updated my own support system to work with the new changes (previous support post here).

Check out these 20 sets with over 300+ new freebies you MUST have in your freebies collection! This roundup contains various types of freebies, such as icons, templates, preloaders, UI kits, mockups, and many more!

In this post you’ll find lots of new freebies you must have in your free downloads collection. You can use these in your future projects. Which ones will you add to your design freebies collection?

In case you are not familiar with JavaScript, it is used to engage users and helps you create awesome animations which will make your website to be remembered. Javascript can be used to create games, APIs, animations, dynamic effects and many other effects.

It seems like only yesterday that Super Nintendos and Game Boys were hitting the store shelves. Over the years, video game graphics has advanced rapidly, and methods of game development have dramatically improved. Nowadays though, it seems like more kids are playing on mobile devices than traditional consoles.

Enter HTML5 with a brand new spec and support for the beloved canvas element. Using the canvas element with JavaScript and some 2D graphics, anybody can now build crude yet amusing games that run in any web browser.

This post will explain the core concepts of HTML5 game development. Putting aside the expected graphical limitations, you may be surprised how much can be accomplished with only frontend development languages.

Wrapping up the month in our usual fashion a monthly roundup of the very best design tutorials and articles created through out May. We have included some jaw dropping Photoshop tutorials, alongside some really interesting articles about UX and prototyping. Please leave your thoughts in the comments as always we always value comments.